Monsieur Jacques fearlessly braves the linguistic jungle

Date: 21/03/1996

JACQUES Santer should get a medal for bravery.

He should be recognised as a man who will go anywhere, do anything, if it will help convince the British that everything in the garden of Europe is lovely and that the water's fine, so come on in. (This Euro-garden, naturally, has a swimming pool.)

Notwithstanding the mauling his predecessor Jacques Delors received at the hands of the British press over his funny (allegedly) English accent, and strange foreign ways, Jacques the Second went on nation-wide UK radio last week with his even funnier (allegedly) English accent in a bid to convince us that he is just an ordinary bloke with no sinister desire to run off with our national sovereignty.

Listen to me, Jacques was telling the most difficult, the most suspicious, the most unconvinced of the European family's members, do I really sound like an interfering European overlord hell bent on absorbing your island race into a United States of Europe?

Listen to me, he insisted, I am the archetype of the ordinary president next door. I help old ladies across the street, I'll help you with your shopping, I'll do the ironing. Would you like one of my sweets?

And while the Eurosceptics were still advising the public not to accept sweets from étrangers, Jacques was wooing the great unwashed with a bravura radio phone-in performance which should have endeared him to the nation.

The cynics used to complain that Jacques Delors in English sounded like Inspector Clouseau recorded at half speed.

Jacques Santer is not actually French of course and his Luxembourg background means his English accent is liberally sprinkled with guttural Germanic sounds, making him sound even more comical (allegedly) to the unforgiving British ear.

President Santer's first language is Letzeburgish, that very odd gargling sound drawn from the languages of Luxembourg's French and German neighbours.

So when he breaks into English, a language he understands extremely well, the result is a cross between Peter Ustinov playing Hercule Poirot, who was of course Belgian, and Spike Milligan playing a German tank commander.

Jacques Delors never wanted to speak English, and why should he? He avoided it like la peste when he first came to the Commission. But the British press is unrelenting and insisted that the British electorate needed to be addressed by the wicked baron - as he had been painted by Mrs Thatcher - himself.

As soon as Delors relented and opened his mouth, everyone went into raptures. It was too good to be true. He was a broadcaster's dream. He sounded like Clouseau! He sounded like Maurice Chevalier! Why, he sounded like...a Frenchman speaking English!

The mockery upset Delors greatly. Not unreasonably, he felt his English was an 'ole lot betteur zan ze French as she was spoken by ze Engleesh politicians and, of course, he was right.

Have you ever heard Mrs Thatcher's French accent?

Imagine for a moment those stern, school-mistressy tones translated for a continental audience. “Bonshure mon share Shacks. Common tally vous? Jess pair que vous nu voolay pah nous ontanglay darns un Yuropp trow, common puh-juh luh dear, youniffyay?”

Actually, I'm not sure that dear old Margaret was ever caught out attempting to speak French in public, because she saw what a pig's ear her arch enemy and predecessor as party leader, Edward Heath, made of the vowel sounds.

To be fair to him, though, he didn't really make a pig's ear of it at all - he just can't help being English.

Nor can a lot of us, for that matter. And that's what makes the attacks on the two Jacques even sillier. They are, after all, just being foreign and none of us could do any better.

Here we are sniggering at European politicians who can speak three, four or more languages, when our own leaders couldn't survive for two minutes doing a television interview in French, German or Spanish, with or without the obligatory appalling accent.

We all tried to reassure Delors' henchmen that we found him endearing, but the unkind jibes went a bit too far at times.

Delors, not surprisingly, started to turn down requests for English language interviews. He reputedly once told an English camera crew: “When I see Madame Satchair addressing ze weurld in français, zen mebee I weel speak to you in anglais.” He had a good point.

Jacques Santer's English accent isn't appalling. It's warm and cuddly and friendly. It's what it is. It reflects his linguistic heritage. If Santer's sounds like a foreigner speaking English, then the chances are that's because that is exactly what he is.

And remember, when Jacques went on British nation-wide radio last week, he wasn't just speaking in a foreign language. He was talking about highly tricky matters and just one misunderstanding, one maladjusted nuance, could have spelt trouble in anybody's language.

But Jacques the Second, well aware of the image created by Jacques the First, nonetheless fearlessly stalked through the linguistic jungle, every ready to fend off poisonous snakes lurking in the undergrowth.

He talked fluently of creating a federation of nation states, he pilloried “over-enthusiastic bureaucrats” in national capitals, a phrase which must have taken some practising, and he chuckled, yes actually chuckled, in English about British hysteria over bent bananas and curly cucumbers.

Now you may say it doesn't take an international linguist to chuckle, but for a Commission president from Luxembourg (not noted as the chuckle-centre of western Europe) to manage such a thing after all those anti-Euro brickbats and allegations of megalomania takes some doing.

Admittedly, I wouldn't choose Jacques Santer to represent the European Union in the “How-to-Say-'Vulnerable'-in-English International Championships”, but now we're really getting picky.

The fact is that Jacques is the best walking, talking advert the Union has got to promote itself and if his paternal features end up appearing on billboards across the UK, I shouldn't be at all surprised.

Sacreblue! If that, coupled with the odd phone-in thrown in, doesn't win round a few monolinguistic waverers in the ranks of the apathetic British, I don't know what will.

So take a bow, Monsieur Le Prezzydong. You're all right, Jacques!